Calculation of AC losses in stacks and coils made of second generation high temperature superconducting tapes for large scale applications

TL;DR

This paper presents a homogenization method to efficiently model AC losses in stacks and coils of 2G HTS tapes, simplifying complex internal structures while maintaining accuracy for large-scale applications.

Contribution

A novel homogenization approach that replaces detailed stack structures with an anisotropic bulk equivalent, enabling faster simulations without losing accuracy.

Findings

Achieves up to 100x speedup compared to full 2-D simulations.

Maintains high accuracy in modeling electromagnetic behavior of HTS stacks.

Effectively models AC losses in large-scale HTS applications.

Abstract

A homogenization method to model a stack of second generation (2G) High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) tapes under AC applied transport current or magnetic field has been obtained. The idea is to find an anisotropic bulk equivalent for the stack, such that the geometrical layout of the internal alternating structures of insulating, metallic, superconducting and substrate layers is "washed" out while keeping the overall electromagnetic behavior of the original stack. We disregard assumptions upon the shape of the critical region and use a power law E-J relationship allowing for overcritical current densities to be considered. The method presented here allows for a computational speedup factor of up to 2 orders of magnitude when compared to full 2-D simulations taking into account the actual dimensions of the stacks without compromising accuracy.